B-easy wrote:Is this the GOAT MVP race?
I like the positivity here. Drives me nuts when people talk about it being a "weak MVP" race simply because we don't have someone with big numbers and big team records. I can acknowledge that being on a team with a weaker record in practice hurts you're candidacy, but we should be looking to marvel at what players are actually doing out there.
As I say this, I'd note that PER (as well as WS) are box score-based, so what we're talking about extreme productivity not necessarily extreme value. The poster child of this for this era - and likely for future eras looking back - is Westbrook who has given us a concrete set of examples where a guy can rack up all sorts of "good" production without necessarily helping his team.
None of the guys on that list are extremely problematic from this impact perspective...but as we speak of voters getting "tired of Giannis", it has to be mentioned that he's not showing anywhere near the signs of impact he did at his impact peak:
By nbashotcharts' RAPM:
'18-19 - 3.22
'19-20 - 4.72
'20-21 - 2.17
'21-22 - 2.61
If you're not worried about this going forward then you're right there with me, and right there with Giannis himself:
I think Giannis has been putting less effort into the regular season these past two years than he did in the MVP campaigns, and last year was his best playoff run, so I think opponents need to see him as scarier than ever in the playoffs...but the doubts pertaining to Giannis' MVP campaign aren't really about getting tired of him. It's about the Bucks literally having a blah regular season when they don't have any good excuse for it.
Also, people are talking about the Bucks getting the #1 seed, and I'd agree this is both possible and possibly something that will nail in his MVP bonafides - Embiid's in a similar boat - but we shouldn't forget that this is only possible because there are NO elite teams in the East at all this regular season. The records of the best teams in the East right now are in the same ballpark as we've seen from 8 seeds in some previous years, and so we shouldn't end up confusing "finishing #1 in the East" with actually playing like a dominant team.
This is also why I've specifically said that contrary to thinking that Giannis is getting hurt by "voter fatigue", the reality is that he's getting tremendously helped by the championship last year. If the Bucks lose in the 2nd round last year, the basketball world would see this Bucks campaign as the team sliding further and further from contention on its way to irrelevancy, and no one would be talking about Giannis as if it's obvious he should be MVP. Instead, people are essentially crediting the Bucks with being elite based on the championship, and then they are looking at Giannis putting up elite numbers on a team they classify as "elite" to create the formula where they see him as the obvious choice.
None of this is meant to be a knock on Giannis' capabilities, nor am I saying I don't have Giannis on my 5 man ballot, but in terms of him being a "GOAT level MVP candidate this year", he really shouldn't be seen that way.
I could say some similar things about Embiid superficially, but the reality is that he's being judged in part based on the whole Simmons debacle. If Embiid manages to get his team to a #1 seed with him healthy and thriving the rest of the way, awfully hard to imagine he doesn't win it because of how glaring the "one hand tied behind his back" situation is.
Jokic on the other hand - while his record will certainly hold him back - I think we need to seriously start asking ourselves where this stacks up among the greatest regular seasons of all-time. The idea of possibly breaking the PER all-time record by a wide margin while having your team do 22 points better with you than without you is insane. He's accomplishing objective things like we've never seen before while playing in a style we've never seen before (to anywhere near this extent at least), and anyone knocking him blithely isn't criticizing him based on anything real about him as a player.
And of course as I say all of this, I reiterate what very few people want to hear:
It's still not clear who is more impactful between Jokic & Curry. With Curry's slump many have decided he's been eliminated from MVP consideration - but while he has dropped to an extent on my list, the impact of his presence remains something extreme.
